Details of Sculptor

Surname

Carline family

Alternative Surname

First Name

of Shrewsbury

Initial of Surname

C

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

Year of Death

Biographical Details

John Carline I 1761-1835
John Carline II 1792-1862
Thomas Carline 1799-1868
The Carline family had been stonemasons in Lincoln where they were evidently well-known, since a road is named after them. John I’s father, another John (1730-98) moved to Shrewsbury where he oversaw the building of the English Bridge between 1769 and 1774. His mother, Anne, was related to John Hayward II of Lincoln.
John Carline I ran a flourishing business as an architect, builder and monumental mason in Shrewsbury. He built himself a house in the Abbey foregate and his stone-yard was in the area now occupied by the Abbey Gardens, where some salvaged fragments of architectural sculpture, which he probably collected, can still be seen. For a time he worked in partnership with a bricklayer, John Tilley. Together they were employed by Thomas Telford to erect Montford Bridge, Salop, 1790-92 and to rebuild the bridge over the Rea Brook at Coleham Head, Shrewsbury after the flood of 1795. They also built the Welsh Bridge at Shrewsbury to their own designs, 1793-95. In 1791 the partners announced that they had purchased the stock in trade of the carver and marble mason Van der Hagan of Shrewsbury, and that they intended to continue his business in monuments and chimneypieces (Shrewsbury Chronicle 1791, inf James Lawson). Tilley apparently died 5 years later and Carline formed a new partnership with Tilley’s stepson Henry Linell in 1797.
John Carline II, who was in partnership with his father for some years, took over the business at his father’s death and it survived until the mid-19th century. He was granted the freedom of Shrewsbury in 1817 and exhibited a monument at the Royal Academy in 1825 (44). He was a prominent local figure who served as a Conservative councillor and is said to have made copies of the Parthenon Marbles which were for a time in Shrewsbury Museum. He joined forces with a Richard Dodson in 1835 or soon after, but Dodson ended the partnership in 1845. At about that time Carline found himself in financial difficulties. He lost a considerable sum in connection with the restoration of Hereford Cathedral, where he had contracted to work under the architect L N Cottingham. He was also owed money by his brother Thomas Carline. Disheartened by these problems he went to live with another brother, Richard, who was a successful solicitor in Lincoln. The business was continued for a time by his clerk, James Hewitt, but was eventually disbanded. John II died at Lincoln in 1862. Several descendants of the Carline family became artists, including Hilda Carline who married the painter Stanley Spencer, but none took up sculpture.
The firm’s building and architectural works included a portico at Adderley Hall, Salop for Sir Corbet Corbet (1787-8, demolished 1877), St Alkmund, Shrewsbury (1793-5), the dining room at Pradoe, Salop for Sir Thomas Kenyon (1810), Claremont Buildings, Shrewsbury (nd) and Pellwall House, Market Drayton Staffs, built for Purney Sillitoe to designs by Sir John Soane (1822-8). As marble masons they provided a chimney piece for the library at Eaton Hall (69) and in 1812 received a payment of £1,446 for a marble floor in the entrance hall (Grosvenor Archives, in GPC). John Carline II, who was interested in ecclesiology and archaeology, specialised in gothic and romanesque church buildings and designed neo-Norman churches at Grinshill and Albrighton, Salop.
John I and II were responsible for a large number of funeral monuments. They executed the Poore family monument in Salisbury Cathedral (28). This is in an archaeologically accurate gothic revival style and has a finely carved canopy over a tomb-chest. It was described at the time as ‘perhaps one of the most perfect specimens of florid Gothic in the Kingdom’ (New Monthly Mag, 1817, 563). Sir Corbet Corbet’s wall monument at Adderley has a graceful seated woman, carved in the round, under a draped canopy suspended from stylised flowers (39). The ‘noble and splendid’ gothic memorial to the Rev J B Blakeway in St Mary, Shrewsbury (48), was designed by John II c1818 and carved with ‘exquisite talent’ by the Carline firm a decade later (GM, 1828, ii, 315-7). They also erected the monument commemorating Lieutenant-Colonel John Hill, carved by Sir Francis Chantrey, 1815, at Hodnet, Shropshire and provided elegantly carved Grecian surrounds for Chantrey’s busts of John Simpson and William Hazeldine in St Chad, Shrewsbury (33, 57). Their most prominent public work is the group of four lions, carved in local Grinshill stone, at the base the column celebrating the military achievements of Rowland, 1st Viscount Hill, which was designed by Edward Haycock and erected in Shrewsbury in 1817 (70).
Thomas Carline entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1821 and there met and formed a close friendship with Philip Corbet (1801-1877), who later married Carline’s sister Jane and established himself as a portrait painter in Shropshire. The two men travelled to Holland together in 1830 and Corbet’s portraits include depictions of several members of Carline’s family. Carline won the Society of Arts’ silver Isis medal for a single figure in 1821 (67) and exhibited at the RA between 1825 and 1828, first showing a model for part of a monument commemorating Sir John Hill of Hawkstone (43). On viewing the monument, with its ‘admirably executed’ relief of a funeral procession, one critic declared ‘never did sculpture tell its tale more forcibly, or with more congeniality to the hearts and feelings of Englishmen than this’ (GM, 1826, II, 589). In 1826 he exhibited ‘a most interesting and expressive group of two orphan children (74) which was fortunate enough to obtain one of the best situations in the sculpture-room’ at the RA (GM, 1826, II, 589). Thomas Kenyon of Pradoe, Salop commissioned the statue of his son, Henry Kenyon, exhibited in 1828 (68): the child, who died in 1827 at the age of 5, is shown sleeping. In spite of this period of initial success, Carline failed to maintain his reputation as a sculptor and ended his career as a surveyor of bridges in the North Riding of Yorkshire.
In the following list all monuments by ‘John Carline’, unless otherwise indicated, are listed as the work of John Carline I until 1835, the year of his death.
EH
Literary References: RSA Transactions, vol 39, 1821, xxxviii; Carline 1958, 13-5; Corbet and Carline Families 1958, passim; Hobbs 1960, 17-8; Gunnis 1968, 80-1; Colvin 1995, 215-6
Archival References: GPC
Additional Manuscript Sources: Carline Order Book; Carline/Downward
Collections of Drawings: books of plans and drawings, 1771-1802 and plan of Shadwell Hall, Mainstone, 1812, Salop CRO
Miscellaneous Drawings: plan for a proposed museum and library in Shrewsbury, by John Carline II, nd, coll S Morley Tonkin